This week’s bird party was sponsored by Brian & Leanne & family. They gave me this awesome birdseed wreath.
The birds were skeptical, but as usual, it was a chickadee that was brave enough to try it first.
It’s lasted all week and luckily the squirrels stayed off of it! I haven’t caught the squirrel in the globe feeder again.
We’re heading to an eagle party tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll have a lot of photos to share!
We both had today off in lieu of Remembrance Day yesterday.
It was warm today! Double digits! Jeff finished a step for the front door yesterday and today he replaced a couple wall boards on his shed.
I did some of weeding on the rose garden and some weed whacking. I brought the hummingbird feeders in to soak so I can get them cleaned up and put away.
I’ve enjoyed watching a red breasted nuthatch at our feeders this weekend. Just one. I don’t think I’ve seen a nuthatch here at all before, but Jeff swears we’ve had them before, often, so maybe I’m finally old enough to have lost my memory. …..Yes, I just did a blog search and I’ve had them on our list of birds here in 2009 so he is right and I am old.
Jeff has a pork roast in the oven that he covered in a herb rub. Oh my goodness it smells good. I bought a couple bundles of fresh beautiful carrots from our neighbour at the farmer’s market. Can’t wait to have them with the roast.
Other excitement today, Zeus killed a mouse in the basement! What a killer, eh? Good boy.
I have been so aggravated by Christmas creeping into our stores before Hallowe’en. It is WAY WAY WAY too early for Santa Clause parades and Christmas tree sales and Christmas carols! WAY TOO EARLY! December 1st is too early for Christmas carols. This is going to make everyone so sick and tired of Christmas by the time it comes.
However, I did start a bit of Christmas shopping. It is a great plan for me to start early so we can get them in the mail to Ontario before it costs us a fortune for guaranteed pre-Christmas deliver. I think I start early every year though and peter out before too long.
Christmas will be very different for us this year, and not so quiet! We haven’t gone home for Christmas since our wedding in 2007 because it is such an awful time of the year for travel, both for the actual travel and because of the pets and heating the house. But this year we will have company!! My mom and sister are heading east on the train to spend the holidays with us! (less presents to mail!)
It will be nice. I’ve coped okay having our quiet Christmases, and sitting in on family Christmases on video chats, but it is a little hard to have our beautiful Christmas dinner over in 10 minutes and Jeff watches football and it is just so strange not having a house full of family.
I have no idea what we’ll do for the rest of the days they are here, but maybe we’ll save some wood to stack or something. Keep them busy 
Over on the right hand side I’m trying out a “On this day in…” feature that shows posts I’ve made on this date in previous years. Like today for instance, it has been 7 years since sweet little Surf left us.
If you are an email subscriber for the blog, you may have noticed that I’ve been posting some early entries from 1983. I found a school journal from grade 2 and grade 3 and they are so hilarious! My spelling is atrocious. I’m entering them in a few at a time, and preserving the bad spelling. If you want to follow along, they start on Feb 3, 1983
It is 5pm and almost completely dark. Ugh. I hate driving home from work in the dark.
It is a sunny Saturday morning. I am sitting on the porch listening to:
Monty’s nails click across the deck
A singing robin
A woodpecker banging on a tree
A car go by below on the road
A plane high up in the sky
A grouse thumping in the woods
A distant chain saw
A chickadee flick his wings as he flies behind my head
A mourning dove coo
The pretty songs of the finches thanking me for filling up the bird feeders
An ATV driving around across the lake at someone’s cottage
Three blue jays racing each other to the feeder
A dog barking faintly in the distance
The buzz of a dozen flies as they wake up for the day
The ticking expansion of the vinyl siding as the sun starts to heat it up
The wind in the tall spruce trees as the breeze picks up
Sheesh its noisy out here
Sorry alarm clock, woodstove, sink, tap, dishes, car, ice, wipers, wet pants, socks, shirt, keys, shampoo and every other inanimate object that I growled and grumbled at this morning.
But I was running late.
And the alarm clock came on too quiet so it didn’t wake me up right away, and the shampoo wouldn’t wash out of my hair fast enough, and the fire wouldn’t stay going, oh and today is pink shirt day, and I couldn’t find a pink shirt, and then I found one, and then I tripled my pink with pink underwear and a pair of pink/black/white striped socks (thanks Julie), and then the sink was taking too long to fill with water to put the pork roast in to thaw, and the tap wasn’t big enough to pump out more water, and the dishes were in the way because I didn’t wash them last night, and the car was at the bottom of the driveway because we got a lot of snow yesterday, and the car was ice covered and had to be chiseled, and walking through the snow down to the road got my pants soaked, and my keys were stuck in my pocket on my mittens, oh and then I locked myself out of my running car (but thankfully just the driver’s door was locked), and then I was stuck behind some person in a line of 10+ cars driving 40-50 km/hr all the way to town, when they KNEW I was going to be late…
And I’m sorry to the birds and the squirrels who will go hungry today because the bird seed is in my car and the car didn’t make it to the house. Please don’t starve and die. I’ll fill up your feeders this afternoon.
And I’m sorry Jeff that you are coming home from a work trip to a snow filled driveway and a messy kitchen.
It’s just so hard to go to bed early when I have the TV all to myself and I can watch girly shows.
Sincerely,
Lisa
P.S. Something Borrowed is a great movie.
Here are a few bird photos I took earlier this week:
Sally loves watching the birds.
Brian & Leanne & family!!
They had a humongous bag of sunflower seeds delivered to our house for Christmas.
Today I filled up the bird feeders before I left for work with their seed.
I see the birds have already dug in!
Update: Argh. Looks like the cam might have froze on one pic. I’ll reset this afternoon, if it doesn’t fix itself.
Awwww, the perfect Saturday morning.
It is after 10am and my hair is still standing straight up. I can only guess that Jeff woke up in the dark hours but I slept right through.
I was stumbling through a old mechanic’s shop carrying empty pop cans with my sister Julie trying to get to the ocean, and hoping Dad that was somewhere behind us talking to a guy of the last shop we snuck through would find our same short cut and catch up with us.
But by 9:45am I figured I should leave the ocean and wake up and shake off the dreams.
First thing I did was stumble outside and fill up the bird feeders.
We’ve been having bird parties every morning. Sometimes 30+ evening grosbeaks fly in! That bird species always seems to travel in packs.
Still no blue jay has showed up to tackle the new whole peanut feeder.
Last night when I got home from work there were two really large grouse in a tree behind the house. They were walking along the branches, eating something. Branch ends? Buds? There were on the hardwood trees. I tried to take photos of them, but it was getting dark and I couldn’t hold the camera still enough. Sometimes I think I should be keeping the tripod out of the box and ready to go.
Jeff can’t be found, but neither can his truck, so I’m assuming he went to town early to find a new tire for the ATV wagon. It is going up to +5 today so he’ll likely be itchin’ to get more gravel into the ruts in the driveway.
We also need to get another cord of wood in the basement to do it’s last drying before burning. Jeff is going to be in Ontario for a week later this month, so he wants to be extra sure I can survive on my own, and have plenty of wood to burn and keep warm.
OH! The first birds have arrived to the bird party. Let me take a photo for you.
–pause–
Oh and here is the least out of focus photo of one of the grouse in the tree last night:
Jeff is back. He had no luck getting a new tube for the tire for the ATV wagon trailer, so he will have to order the one from Princess Auto for $5, although it will also have a $5 shipping charge. And he might as well order two since the other one has been repaired too.
It’s Saturday morning and a big flock of those pretty yellow and black big birds just flew it – evening grosbeaks I think they were called. Jeff counted 20 of them! I just ran out to fill the feeder, but they flew away 
I hope they come back!!
We’re off to the farmer’s market to do some Christmas shopping. We have a snow fall warning forecast for tonight. Maybe 15 cm. We don’t have a plow yet for our new ATV! It isn’t expected to arrive until at least Monday. Uh oh! Hopefully the snow will melt on it’s own!
Here is our new toy:
We have 2 hummingbird feeders now – the traditional hanging variety, and the small type that sticks with a suction cup to a window (like Uncle Joe has in PEI).
We have 2 kinds of hummingbirds and at least 2 of each. Tonight 2 ruby throated hummingbirds were chasing each other around for hours. They are noisy and vicious. Grandma and Joe said they’d never heard a hummingbird – other than the brrrrrr of their wings – and thought I was crazy. But hummingbirds are quite chatty – and vicious when they are fighting with each other!
Here are some pictures:
